Alvaro Arbeloa believes Fulham They finally got what they deserved after Alex Iwobi’s first-half goal was enough to see them through helmet and get their first Premier League win of the season.
The Cottagers started the day as one of three winless teams in the top flight (Bournemouth and Tottenham the others) but went off the mark to climb out of the bottom three.
Iwobi’s goal came from poor Hull defending with the Tigers twice failing to clear their lines, allowing the former Everton midfielder to slot past Konstantinos Tzolakis, via a Lucas Herrington deflection.
Fulham had good value for the win with the only blemish coming late on when Ryan Sessegnon was sent off for a bad challenge on Robinio Vaz.
Statistics of the match
The victory Arbeloa – Fulham had been delayed
The win eases the pressure on coach Arbeloa, but he felt his team were worthy winners.
He told BBC Match of the Day: “I’m very happy, especially for the fans, they deserve this win, for the players, they were looking for this win and they’ve been working hard. We deserved it in other games but we couldn’t get it, today was finally the day.
“We were having the same feeling as other games, when we controlled the game for long periods and had good chances but didn’t score. Our opponents punish our mistakes or take their chances, but today we were brilliant for 90 minutes. We controlled the game, had a lot of chances and didn’t give Hull any clear chances, a very good team. We have to keep improving. We have to keep improving.
“We have a lot of talented players who can score. They will have chances. The bench players will also be very important for us. We have a lot of chances and we have to try to take advantage of them.”
Fulham travel to Coventry next weekend before taking on Crystal Palace in the EFL Cup.
“It’s a massive week because we’ve got Coventry, then Palace,” said Arbeloa. “It won’t be easy, but we know how we have to play and compete, we have to be competitive in this league.”
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position 1, 2, 3, 4: Promotion – Champions League (League phase)
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position 5: Promotion – Europa League (League phase)
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position 18, 19, 20: Relegation – Championship
Fulham were much better than us – Hull boss Jakirovic
Hull defied expectations with a strong start to the season following promotion but have now failed to win any of their last five in the Premier League.
And boss Sergej Jakirovic had no arguments with the result. he said: “It’s easy to analyze this game; we were out of everything. Fulham were much better than us, in and out of possession, first and second balls, duels. It was men against boys. We didn’t show anything today. But we can’t change anything now.”
“Fulham’s performances have been good, they should have more points. We knew it was going to be difficult today. We were completely out.
“It was very frustrating, maybe we had some situations around the box but we made the wrong decisions. They were much more aggressive than us and could have scored more.”
